Sophie Turner May Play Dark Phoenix in a Future X-Men Movie

Could we be seeing the Dark Phoenix storyline adapted in future X-Men movies? X-Men: Apocalypse star Sophie Turner teased a possible dark turn for her character in the future of the X-Men cinematic universe.

In a recent interview with EW, Turner said that she "would love to take another stab" at the classic Jean Grey storyline from the comics, and went so far as to say that the development was teased in Apocalypse to set the stage for future movies:

"The seeds of Phoenix definitely are planted in there. She can't control her powers unless she either fully stops them or lets them all loose, and that's kind of Phoenix. I think in future movies to come we'll definitely see a bit more of that."

The Dark Phoenix Saga was an extended storyline in which Jean Grey becomes inundated with corruptive power and starts calling herself "Dark Phoenix." When Famke Janssen played Jean Grey in the original X-Men trilogy, she was Jean Grey for two films before X3 tackled the Dark Phoenix storyline, but the film was a disappointment and fans were unhappy with the handling of the story.

Simon Kinberg, who will work on future X-Men films and also worked on X3, agreed that the storyline wasn't handled as well as it could have been:

"Famke, the Dark Phoenix story, the way that Matthew Vaughn-who was originally the X3 director-the way that he and Zak Penn, who co-wrote that movie, and I wanted to tell the Dark Phoenix story is a bit different than the way it ended up being told, so we didn't really get to dig into those characters and they're such huge, iconic characters in the franchise," he told Collider.

And when asked if the new timeline from Days of Future Past could give rise to that storyline being re-done, Kinberg seemed optimistic, although he didn't go so far as to confirm it:

"Sure, I think everything that hasn't been told in First Class or Days of Future Past is up for grabs going forward, so it would absolutely be a story that we could tell in a different way."

Even without these statements, it seems pretty likely that we'll be seeing the storyline in some form. The Dark Phoenix storyline is a classic in the X-Men universe, and Sophie Turner is arguably the biggest star among the new roster of mutants, so it makes sense that she would be given a meaty storyline that requires her to turn evil. We can probably expect to see this happen at some point in the next few X-Men movies.